#171

This looks perfect! I’ll give it a shot. Thanks!

Okay, gave it a shot. It seems one of my sequencers of choice just wasn’t translating well to VCV. Turns out that if any notes were next to each other it would string them together in to one note. It didn’t work that way with ableton, but thats just the way the cookie crumbles. Thanks for your suggestion though!

Okay, we have now reached the end of the journey: My OPZ works pretty dang well with Rack and, like some with an ACTUAL Euro Rack, shall be a good physical option for getting sequences going. Thanks for the help!

#172

Should we have a separate miRack thread for the iOS software, or is it cool to talk about it here?

4 Likes
#173

I’d vote for a separate thread. They are quite different.

1 Like
#174

Cool. I started one:

https://llllllll.co/t/patching-the-mirack-ios-synth/

2 Likes
#175

I’m not sure if you meant that literally but, since it is often a source of confusion, you don’t send something through an envelope. You send a trigger or gate to an envelope and then send the envelope voltage somewhere. A really common use, for instance, is to send the output of a VCO to a VCA, and then use the envelope to control the VCA. That way the amplitude of the VCA’s output is shaped by the envelope.

5 Likes
#176

I have certainly figured out my mistake over time, haha. Thanks for the clarity though, it’s really incredibly helpful to have the right terminology and basic understanding to then be able to communicate discoveries or difficulties.

As a side note, anybody been sequencing Rack with an OPZ? If so, I’ve been trying to work out some workflow ideas and wanted to hear what others might be up to!

I guess my final Rack question is; have people been able to get a synchros clock across a few programs and devices with Rack? I’ve been using an OPZ and my norns (eagerly awaiting quantized clips!!). It’s been tough getting proper clock in or out of Rack, even though it has the option. Preferably I’d want my OPZ to be the main clock. Any experience?

#177

I was thinking we might do a “shared system” VCV Rack project in the Disquiet Junto. Would some folks like to help come up with a good shared system, built only from freely available Rack modules? Thanks!

14 Likes
#178

Great idea. There a several shared system-type patches on patchstorage. I recall a basic A-100 type system. You might get some ideas searching over there. I believe there was also a very cool patch challenge that used a template of free modules but that may have been pre v1.

1 Like
#179

I figured out a little bit of Just Friendliness in VCV Rack too:

fake%20just%20friends
fake just friends.png2238×1280 924 KB

This is basically the tuning system with banks of oscillators and offsets. The first VCO is the fundamental, so it doesn’t get an offset. The first offset is ever so slightly scaled up and fed into the FM input of VCO #2- this is the only offset (top knob) you’ll want to use while actually playing it. Offset #1 then is feed into Offset #2, which you scale up (bottom knob) a little bit more than Offset #1. Rinse and repeat for the other two offsets/oscillators and tune the scale knobs to taste.

Lesson(s): Offsets are nice and Mannequins modules are pretty dense.

5 Likes
#180

Cool. I’ll look around there. I forgot there’s a VCV Rack exchange on it.

1 Like
#181

SICK! I have finally figured out 90% of my audio and midi routing system, have the OPZ patched in and my Midi Fighter Twister all properly assigned. So, its time to start getting more comfortable with these audio generators. Going to put together a simple OPZ melodic sequence together and begin exploring with the audio capabilities outlined here.

And if anybody is curious, the basics to fixing some of the clocking issues with VCV Rack to external devices (such as the norns and the OPZ) would be to send out clock at a 24x your VCV Clock Generator, such as this method:

54
Screenshot 2019-10-11 16.22.54.png792×742 278 KB

4 Likes
#182

Figured I’d bring this question here, since it’s VCV Rack based but also Modular related;

Basically I’m taking the plunge in to wanting to design my own sounds. I have been mainly midi and samples/kontakt libraries for a long time, but have heard so many great modular sounds (which are what I have always WANTED to produce but haven’t been able to).

Can anyone give tips on where to start? Guidance on what standard paths and modules might be to replicate much of the softer, more dreamy tones I hear around here? I guess this post doesn’t help much since I don’t have sound examples, but I could grab a bunch and see what folks thing about replicating them.

On the other side of this; how did many of you begin your exploration in to the modular space? We’re there any things you did that felt as if they ‘clicked’ with you and really broke ground for you with making music in modular form?

#183

We’re living in amazing times for sound exploring. VCVrack on computers and miRack on iOS/iPadOS are excellent starting points to figure out what you want in the long run.

I started my descent into modular with a pair of Doepfer Dark Energies and an MS-20 and I have to say, as joyful it was, I would’ve saved a lot of money if VCV and its relatives were around back then.

1 Like
#184

A great place to get an introduction to ambient modular synth is YouTube, just search on that phrase…

There are some brilliant examples with clear views of the instruments and often very detailed descriptions and/or comments…

Some of the wonderful artists behind those videos are members here… :sunglasses:

#185

posted a beta version of my first vcvrack module: Orca’s Heart

15 Likes
#186

Just as a general question to folks who design VCV Rack modules or understand the underlying structure of the C/C++ framework that drives the beast: is a crow module within VCV Rack a possibility? I know we generally have Midi communication as a built in value to VCV, but there are always complications running a norns clock accordingly, not to mention some of the difficulties of getting midi out of a norns and midi signals back in…

Also, I mainly ask this question out of a desire to better understand the structural aspects of VCV to Euro Rack. I generally aim to get a Euro Rack in the next year or two with crow, so it’s no biggy.

#187

Interesting idea, seems possible. You would need to basically

  • swap out all the hardware stuff with appropriate CV I/O, timers, etc for VCV. the good news is I think a lot of this has already been done in various VCV ports of STM32-based modules, e.g. Mutable ports?
  • figure out what to do about I2C (maybe ignore it for now, this would also need some follower modules to exist) and the serial port (modified version of the “Notes” module, with some type of message passing to send stuff to crow’s virtual USB buffer?)
  • get a build of crow working with your hardware proxies, a Lua environment hosted and stuff. As I understand it the I2C descriptor stuff is currently built into the firmware as sort of a code generation step, that part could be interesting (and maybe you can skip it to figure out I2C behavior later)
  • other stuff I’m overlooking?

From a quick search it looks like there are maybe a couple existing VCV modules hosting Lua, for instance here. This looks like it maybe also lets you script the module’s UI with Lua?!

1 Like
#188

Wow! This is a cool find!! My main reasoning behind the desire for a crow module is the general difficulty of syncing a norns clock to VCV. I love the ability to modulate the global clock in VCV and being able to effectively apply that (plus the midi start/stop of mlr and midi sync of mlr) would be HUGE.

Since I’ve now stumbled on to such a subject, has anyone tried and successfully synced the Norns clock to VCV?

#189

Right, this reminds me of one of those things I’m overlooking in a crow emulation - you need to be able to pipe serial connections with external devices into VCV to talk to your Virtual Murder. VCV can maybe just talk to the serial port like any other program? Probably someone has got a cross platform C++ library that could be used. Here is where I start betraying that I have not worked with VCV programming at all.

#190

I don’t think there’s much point in a super-faithful hardware emulation of crow in VCV for norns interop. (It would involve making your computer act as a USB serial device!) There’s almost certainly a better way to accomplish anything you’d hope to gain by that.

If you want variable clocking, then yeah, MIDI 24ppq clock messages are not going to work well. But you can send triggers as MIDI notes. Adapting a norns script to take a variable clock stream via MIDI note triggers from VCV would be just as easy as adapting it to receive crow triggers.

(There would be value in a VCV crow port that ignored the serial interface stuff and let you script in Lua solely within the VCV patch, especially if it supported i2c to other modules, but as people have pointed out, there are already Lua-scripting modules in the VCV library.)

1 Like